Perhaps if We Talked Less and Listened More

Someone somewhere said, "God gave us two ears and one mouth for a reason." I feel fairly certain that was said as a sublte reproof because most of us do at least as much talking as we do listening. I suppose it is not really fair to indict all of you along with me, but there is another old saying that, "Misery loves company." I admit, I have done my share of complaining in 58 years of treading this soil. Then again, as most of you know, I am an introvert so my talking is, more often than not, consolidated to times when I have to talk, like when I am teaching a class. It did not always used to be so. I craved attention and was pretty good at talking for the sake of getting it. I could throw out a witicism or a barb with barely a thought about how it might be received. I have also been wounded a few times. Trust me, everyone knew about them. A couple friends even told me to quit talking about the wounds and the people who had inflicted them. I do not think either of them read this blog. They probably do not even know it exists. Then again, my guess is neither of them even remember the incidents. Still, I feel like I need to acknowledge David Saltzman and Nancy Ostini who caught me up short on two separate occasions. Thank you.

I, having said that and you having read that, can agree it is good advice to listen more than we talk, but then again, everyone knows we talk too much and do not listen enough. When we do listen, we usually listen to ourselves regardless of who is actually talking at the time. My in house human communications expert tells me that as much as ninety-three percent of our communications with one another is non-verbal. We are communicating by body language or facial expressions. Even voice inflections are considered non-verbal in this regard. When we attempt to communicate with some other person, we are trying to convey to them concepts in our mind which are not necessarily received correctly. Add to that the fact that we often hear what we expect the other person to say and/or hear what we wish the other person would say and it adds up to something well less than perfect understanding on both ends. The bottom line is that we do not hear because we do not listen.


In the last post, I mentioned I try to keep my spiritual ears open to the Holy Spirit regardless of whatever else I might be doing. Some people think that is kind of freaky or mystical or something. Virtually all those people have either not experienced the Holy Spirit speaking into their spirit or simply did not recognize it when He did. Years ago, while trying to explain the concept to a group of brilliant, young, college students (yes, I was definitely over matched intellectually) the Holy Spirit did speak into my spirit with a simile they immediately grasped. The spirit in man is like the operating system in a computer. Once it is connected to the power (Holy Spirit) and turned on it runs in the background enabling everything else to work. All we have to do activate our spirit. It probably is not productive to discuss whether once our spirit is activated, we need to reactivate it regularly. Maybe we can go there another time.

Scripture does tell us to, "be filled with the spirit" (Ephesians 5:18) I am going to throw in a little Greek lesson here, but I will not charge you extra for it. This phrase is in the Greek present tense. The present tense shows continuing action in present time. When we read the phrase in English we are inclined to think it means to be in a state of having been filled. In other words, we were filled once and we are supposed to stay that way. That would be a different tense in Greek (the imperfect tense if you are interested). By being in the present tense, a literal translation would be "be being filled" or to be in a state in which we are continually being filled. (Scripture actually refers to that as a river and a fountain in various places.) That is only possible when we stay connected to the Holy Spirit. He provides the power for our operating system, our spirit, to run in the background regardless of what we are doing or what is going on around us. This is the state of being Isaiah was referring to when he wrote, "You will keep him in perfect peace, Whose mind is stayed on You." (Isaiah 26:3) The writer of Hebrews tells us essentially the same thing when he writes, "Let us therefore be diligent to enter that rest..." (Hebrews 4:11)

Some of you long time readers are surely asking if I have confused the spirit and the soul. Not at all. The mind is what we use in our effort to activate the spirit. Prayer, praise, and worship are all activities that turn our spirit on. Our soul sits between our body and our spirit, listening to the desires of each of them as they play tug o'war with each other. We decide which direction we will ultimately go. We decide whether to do what Jesus wants or what we want. In spite of the fact we know that going head to head with Him ends in a headache at best, we often stubbornly persist in having our own way. We do this knowing the truth of Proverbs 14:12 that our way will always end in death. It occurs to me that is not always a bad thing. Sometimes that death is to our fleshly desires. That death will end up working out well, but my gosh it is so painful to learn things that way. Why not just make it easy on ourselves and listen to what the Holy Spirit has to say to us--then do it.

Maybe this is my post for old sayings. I am in this for a penny, in it for a pound. If you are coming along, it will not be long before the battle is engaged in earnest. Now would be the time to decide. Our encouragement would be to listen to what the Holy Spirit is telling you. Listen all the time. Then do whatever that is. It will not always make you the most popular person in town. That also is a lesson for another time. See you soon. God bless!

The Weapons of Our Warfare, Part 10

Praying in the Spirit can be a controversial subject in the church. Many people think they are praying in the Spirit because they think they are being directed in their prayers by the Holy Spirit. We will not enter into a debate as to whether those prayers are, in fact, directed by the Holy Spirit. Undoubtedly some are, and equally as undoubtedly, some are not. (This sounds a little like it might get ugly already doesn't it?) Trust me when I tell you, I have pretty much heard all the arguments on both sides of this issue. I used to be a Methodist and then a Baptist. I attended a Nazarene church for a period of time. I embraced Pentecostalism, much to the chagrin of my maternal grandmother who was in eastern Kansas when Aimee Semple McPherson, founder of the Foursquare Church came through there on her way to California. I graduated from a Pentecostal Bible College and an Evangelical (non-Pentecostal) seminary. If, after you have read this post, you think you have an argument I did not do justice here, please call, send an email, or post a comment. That way we might all learn something.


Praying in the Spirit is part of the armor of God. It must be. It says so right there in the Bible. (Ephesians 6:18) Ok, so I had not thought about it quite that way before today. It is obvious really when we think about it. Before we discuss that, though, perhaps we should define exactly what praying in the Spirit really means.


One thing I do know from the discussions I have had about the present day working of the Holy Spirit is that anyone who is willing to discuss the issue with me has as strongly held beliefs as I do on the subject. They also, as I do, hold those beliefs based on their understanding of scripture. It is really not productive to exegete the scripture to show why anyone with such strongly held beliefs is wrong. They have already done that and decided they are right. I am including myself in that. The better way to approach that kind of issue is to just present the teaching and, if it makes sense, let them go back and look at the scripture with a different understanding of the big picture.

Without doubt, as we Pentecostals know from scripture and personal experience, praying in the Spirit means praying in tongues. The vast majority of us know (still talking about Pentecostals) there are two different gifts of speaking in tongues. Most of us know that because someone older, and wiser than us told us so. Rarely did those older, wiser people tell us how they knew that and show us the different gifts from scripture. The dirty little secret there is they probably did not know both of the gifts are shown in the Bible. They simply believed it because the older, wiser people who told them believed it. The term for that is unsconscious competent. They are right, but they do not know why they are right.

Most people, including most Pentecostal ministers, only know about speaking in tongues as the charismatic gift mentioned in 1 Corinthians 12:10. We should make the distinction right now that in this gift, God is speaking to His people through one of our own. Again, research this and get back to us so we can discuss it if you disagree.

The other gift of speaking in tongues in the Bible is sort of tucked away and almost hidden apparently. It must be because almost no one seems to know about it or teach it correctly. Most of that problem is our English translations. We will explain that shortly. It is the gift given to believers at some point after they are born again. According to Pentecostal theology, this happens at the time the believer is baptized in the Holy Spirit. That is not what we are discussing right now.

Acts chapter 10 records the beginning of Peter's ministry to the gentiles. In verse 45, the men with Peter acknowledge that a gift was given to the gentiles and 46 tells us they recognized the gift as speaking in tongues. If you have ever heard a teaching on these verses, you have probably heard the gift is the Holy Spirit, or perhaps even that it is salvation. Reading verse 45 in English we see, "the gift of the Holy Spirit". It is almost always taught that the Holy Spirit is the gift. That is what the English text looks like it says. It does not say that in the original Greek. What it says there is, "the Holy Spirit's gift". Does that make a difference? Can you see it? Either phraseology is correct in the English, possessive case. We just do not get the correct meaning as easily with the translation we usually see in English Bibles. For your reference the Greek is in the genitive case which equates to the English possessive case. When we know that, there is no question the gift is given by the Holy Spirit rather than the Holy Spirit being the gift. The gift He gave is the gift of speaking in tongues that Peter and his companions heard.

Now that we understand that, we can see that praying in the spirit is an invaluable piece of our spiritual armor. With this gift we are speaking to God things we would not otherwise know to speak. The Holy Spirit directs our prayers in a different language so that they are perfect prayers. Our minds are set aside as our spirit prays. (1 Corinthians 14:14) Note that this is the same whichever gift of speaking in tongues we are talking about. If you are inclined, as I am, to have your mind get in the way at times, you will appreciate all the more being able to pray in the spirit.

There is no way for us to really understand in the natural what happens when we pray in the spirit. Imagine being in the heat of a battle with danger all around. As you pray in the spirit, you know which way to move and what to do. The Holy Spirit is guiding you away from danger to safety. He tells you when to be still and when to attack, things you could not possibly know for sure regardless of your experience in battle.

Put on the armor of God, and do not forget to pray in the spirit on all occasions. It will protect you even if any of the other armor fails. Our success in battle will be guaranteed.